HR Nicholls Society

The HR Nicholls Society is a small but well-connected organisation dedicated to reducing the power of unions and promoting industrial relations changes that benefit employers.

According to its website, it aims:


 * To promote discussion about the operation of industrial relations in Australia including the system of determining wages and other conditions of employment.
 * To promote the rule of law with respect to employers and employee organisations alike.
 * To promote reform of the current wage-fixing system.
 * To support the necessity for labour relations to be conducted in such a way as to promote economic development in Australia.

History
The HR Nicholls Society was founded in 1985 by John Stone, former Secretary of the Commonwealth Treasury; Peter Costello, a Melbourne barrister and Liberal Party member who later became the national Treasurer, Barrie Purvis, the Director of the Australian Wool Selling Brokers' Employers' Federation; and Ray Evans, Executive Officer at Western Mining Corporation Limited. Ray Evans was also involved in founding the Lavoisier Group.

The society is named in honour of Henry Richard Nicholls, a Hobart newspaper proprietor who succesfully avoided a defamation action for his strident criticism of High Court Justice H.B. Higgins, the prime author behind the doctrine of the living wage in Australia.

John Halfpenny, then Secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, in his Arthur Calwell Memorial Lecture of 1986, described the H R Nicholls Society as "the Industrial Relations Branch of the Klu Klux Klan"

The society shares an address with the Lavoisier Group, a similar think tank which is one of the few climate change skeptic groups in Australia. 

Minchin Controversy
In March 2006, Senator Nick Minchin addressed the Society, and was recorded advocating radical new changes to Australia's industrial relations laws, far beyond what his government had previously suggested publicly. Minchin also admitted that "The fact is the great majority of the Australian people do not support what we [the HR Nicholls society and the Howard Government] are doing on industrial relations. They violently disagree." 

Personel

 * Ray Evans - President

Contact Information
The H R Nicholls Society Inc PO Box 424, Collins Street West, Vic 8007 Email: nrevans@optushome.com.au Website: http://www.hrnicholls.com.au

External Resources

 * Stephen Long, Minchin seeks 'new wave' of IR change, ABC Radio National: AM, March 8, 2006.
 * Stephen Long, Minister flags more IR changes, ABC News, March 8, 2006.
 * Scoop-idity: How The Truth Was Nicked, WorkersOnline, Isuue 298, March 10, 2006.